Connections/Water

My name is Lyn Younes, and I'm a volunteer at the Met, and my topic is water.

Water has always been a continuum in my life wherever I've been, and I've lived in several places, and it's the one element that has grounded me, and made me feel at home and almost been a source of comfort in a new setting.

Growing up in California, I was surrounded by it. The bay and the Pacific Ocean and the coastal hills were just part of the daily scene. And so I've always been drawn to this particular image. It's got a wonderful stability and serenity to the hills. And the water is just in direct contrast, it's very turbulent, it's very busy, it's very white. San Francisco Bay was very cold and very windy, and sailing out under the bridge into the Pacific was scary.

I can spend hours looking at the ocean and watching it as it changes, but I don't like being on it or in it. So there's a difference.

In summers, we went to Lake Tahoe, and I just have indelible images imprinted in my mind of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains in the deep blue of the lake. It's still my idea of an earthly paradise, to be honest.

I've always been drawn to paintings, I tend to gravitate to them when there's water present.

Paris, where water is very different. And the Seine really divides the city. I lived on the Left Bank and crossed over the Seine every day to the Right Bank to work and I walked down

the Tuileries Garden, and when the fountains were playing in the morning it was the most uplifting, cheerful start to the day, and had absolutely the opposite effect at night, when I'd leave to go back, it would be very calming and soothing. It really was very transformative.

I live currently in Egypt, I spend a major part of the year there, and I cross the Nile several times a day, and every single time I look at it and I am impressed by its majesty, by its

timelessness, by the fact that it has been life-sustaining to so many people over millennia. The Nile can be

vast in places, and the agricultural land, which is very, very green running alongside it can be only a few feet. So it's very dramatic to see a vast expanse of water with this thin line of green and then the Theban hills rising from the desert behind it. In an arid climate like that of Egypt or Syria

to enter a house where there's a fountain, just to hear the water splashing, is extremely soothing and it makes you kind of forget how hot and dusty it is outside.

It's also, to me, very indicative of the kindness and the thoughtfulness of people who live there.

It's a mental trip in a lot of ways to look at a painting like Summer Mountains. You can go in any direction, whether it's to be on the water in a boat, to cross over a bridge, to listen to a waterfall, to go up a path to a solitary peak. You can really take any road you want.

I really think walking by this, you have to stop, because it invites meditation in looking at it. It's a series of contrasts, really.

The stone is very dark and rough and smooth and the water is just very tranquil as it goes over all four sides. But in the end, the water will change the way the stone looks, and over time it's very much the way nature is.

Water is very powerful, but it does have a quality that is also very ethereal, that you see when a wave breaks and then goes back out into the ocean. As it recedes

it leaves just a very thin trace. So I do have a very deep connection with water

it's very basic.